#the dynamics of vanity
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artisyghostlybird-gelat · 14 days ago
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The changing beliefs
1 /2 /3 /4 /5 /6 /7 /8 /9 /10 /11 /12 /13 /14 /15 /16 /17 /💛18💛 // ALL
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biomaterial · 1 month ago
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simply incapable of trusting people once they let on that they are weird about my body in any capacity. keep your misogyny to yourself ✌️
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morsmortish · 7 months ago
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hi beth 🔥 you mentioned dorcas and emma yesterday... i NEED to know more. the wlw world is still a unknown subject for me, so drop some lesbians 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈
hello irene my love!!!! i love love love dorcas and emma individually, and i have SUCH a vision for them together. to me, they’re those two best friends who are almost toxicly dependent. they’re in the same year, same slytherin dorm, and quite a bit older than barty and reg and even maybe the marauders. to me, they are THE homoerotic wlw friendship for the ages.
i have said it before, but i see them having a rlly intense friendship. it’s also not super healthy- they’re both extremely competitive and equally proud and stubborn, and so there’s many instances of forced fake smiles, high levels of passive aggression, and even that over-the-top sickly sweetness. both of them find it hard to form many other connections, and so they find themselves both trapped in this extremely toxic friendship where they’re turning every single thing into a silent competition: emma is cruelly condescending when she is chosen as quidditch captain over dorcas; whilst dorcas not-so-subtly rubs it in when she gets more OWLs; they both simper at each other and shoot barbed but veiled insults every minute of every day. and yet, they also care more about the other than anything else. emma would kill anyone for slagging off dorcas, and dorcas would kill HERSELF before letting anyone try to get between them. they’re simultaneously each other’s worst enemy and each other’s best friend.
everyone else is a bit scared of them, and they really truly have no one else: this is both by choice and by everyone else being extremely intimidated by them. plus, their ‘friendship’ has always been laced with something else, something more, and in the absence of external company, it ramps up in intensity until they are making out to relieve the tensions between them. or they are competing for the best potions grade, with the winner getting a very specific ‘reward’. or they are finding ways to let out all the pent-up frustration they bear towards each other. they would never ever go as far as to describe themselves as dating, or in any sort of romantic relationship, and yet they have never quite been ‘just friends’. the ultimate situationship.
they’re like two ends of a tug-of-war rope, their ‘friendship’ frozen in the middle. dorcas is hot-headed and angry, whilst emma is calculated and coldly cruel. fire and ice. they’re both outcasts from pureblood society: dorcas as a muggle-born, and emma as a part of a disgraced lineage. they’re both poc women trying to stay afloat in the1970s. they also both always want to be the best at everything. they’re both ambitious and proud and selfish. in a way, they balance each other out, but also bring out the worst in each other. yet they both find solace in being able to be this ‘worst version’ of themselves- the pretence of fake smiles and forced kindness holds no value, and they both know the truth behind it all. it’s not the same as pretending to be a good person, as they are both entirely aware that neither of them are. they are just as bad for each other as they are good. they give each other the freedom to be terrible, and in a twisted way make each other better.
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rooneynatural · 2 months ago
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mmmatchasims · 2 months ago
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I'll know the day when it comes I'll feel the cold as they put out my sun
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careol · 8 months ago
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nothing makes a room feel emptier, than wanting someone in it...
© @careol
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loveforvanity · 2 years ago
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Gargamel, remember me as Smurfazalea, who's never gonna wish you well.
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Because no one messes with me...
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...no one messes with the smurfs....
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....or messes with my husband VANITY!
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All digital fan artwork is mine and are inspired by my favorite Smurf episodes. ✨Toon-Romantic (Azelia)🌸
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alwayslcyal · 1 year ago
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josh and ?? –- love for a shipping whore
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rinarogare · 19 days ago
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hereticdiaries · 1 month ago
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hadesnatural · 2 months ago
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careol · 8 months ago
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i'm not like aspen idk where to find fancy quotes that fit what i'm thinking but basically mom and daughter being triggered by a crime scene
feat. @sunomaly
© @careol
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eowynstwin · 4 months ago
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clawing at the door
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ghoap x reader. jealousy. bisexual soap. bisexual ghost. emotionally constipated ghost. manipulative soap. ghost likes em thick. lightly explicit. MDNI. ao3
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When Ghost first sees you and Soap together, his jealousy is hard to parse. He doesn't quite understand what he's feeling.
On the one hand, Occam's Razor. Simple explanations usually prove the truest. Soap is his boy, has been since Las Almas, and you are an interloper in their hard-won dynamic. Ghost does not absorb others into his life lightly, even less so then he allows them to strongarm themselves beneath the mask. He doesn't particularly like people, isn't really fond of their tendency toward abject mortality.
Soap's strong arms are a rare exception. And Ghost has nearly died too many times not to admire a nice round ass when he sees one—the kind that glistens and quivers beneath the weak spray of a communal shower. Some part of him has always kind of supposed the sergeant had been showing off specifically for him, too, when he dropped trousers and moaned like a whore when the hot water started flowing.
The boy certainly dogs his steps like that's the case.
Then, you: showing up on base one day, Soap's hand spread wide and possessive on the small of your back. Jewel-bright eyes following your every move. Blush high and feverish on his boy's cheekbones every time you throw half a smile his way.
So it's envy. So it's a crush, unrequited.
Simple problem, simple solution. Getting over by getting under and all that. There are apps for every heartache, and plenty of hard-bodied gym rats out there tripping over themselves to bottom for a brute like him, who can actually throw them around.
Not two minutes after making his profile (military, six-five, top), likely candidates start filing themselves into his inbox. Some part of his ego is gratified, at least. The influx of taint pics certainly confirms for him that his vanity, in fact, is justified, even if the last thing he wants to see is some random stranger's asshole.
He messages a jacked brunette with brown eyes and dimples, who led instead with a comparatively tame "hey big guy," and lets him pick the bar where they'll meet up.
And it's...fine.
The guy is fine. Equally as attractive in person as on camera, with curly hair and short stubble. He's there before Ghost, and directs an easygoing smile at him when he drops onto a stool at the bar beside him.
He doesn't even question the mask, though his eyes linger on it, half-lidded, the kind of way that suggests he's figuring something out about himself that he hadn't considered before. Not the first time it's happened for Ghost.
The problem with fine is that Ghost can't work up even much of a chub talking to him. The guy has a nasally voice and a friendly attitude that makes Ghost's teeth go numb from the sweetness. When they sequester in the dingy pub bathroom, the guy goes to his knees like an angel, and Ghost's cock actually softens more, thoroughly bored already with the notion of this random guy’s mouth on it.
The problem is, Soap would bust Ghost's balls for this.
Sure, Ghost could get him on his knees. Soap is a good boy, he'll take an order if he's given one. But he's also a fucking brat, and the moment Ghost pulled his cock out Soap would immediately start complaining about it.
Too big, too ugly, not hard enough, and when was the last time Ghost washed that fucking thing? How romantic, LT, making him suck Ghost off in a pub bathroom, hasn't he ever heard of good old-fashioned wooing?
He'd complain, Ghost knows, because he'd want, more than anything, for Ghost to just cut through the bullshit and shove straight down his throat. He'd run his mouth because the only thing he wants Ghost to do is shut him the fuck up, for once, and make him actually work for the praise they both know he's so desperate for.
And Ghost would give it. If Soap earned it. The fight isn't about winning.
This guy isn't putting up a fight. He tries nicely, licks all over the limp-hanging head and pale glans, but Ghost ends up making some excuse—Dad has cancer, Mom died, the usual—and leaving him there still on his knees.
He deletes the apps. He can invest in a fleshlight, and find some porn star another with enough of a resemblance to be functional.
Less of a hassle for everyone involved.
Problem solved.
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And then he encounters you again.
You're walking out of the supermarket one night, with two huge bags over your shoulders, digging through your purse out in front of you. He has to stop you with one hand on your shoulder to keep you from running into him.
The evening is warm; your shirt is a thin camisole with little elastic straps. His palm meets your bare skin, and finds it soft and dewy with a little sweat.
You look up, startled, blinking as if caught in a bright light.
"Oh," you say, "Ghost, hello!"
"Bird," he grunts, wondering why he's surprised that you recognize him.
He pulls his hand away, and still feels the imprint of your body heat in its grooves.
"Sorry, I should have been looking," you say, smiling. It's a friendly expression, open and innocent—a daisy's petals spread on a clear day. "Johnny's making beef wellington tonight when he's off duty, so I went and got everything."
Ghost frowns. What kind of boyfriend lets his girl do so much heavy lifting?
He helps you carry the bags to your car. He's jealous, not an asshole. You thank him with a breezy laugh when he closes the hatchback—
"I'm sure Johnny wouldn't mind if you stopped by for dinner," you say, folding your arms across your ribcage. It presses your tits together as you cup your elbows in your hands, pronouncing the line of your cleavage with an uncomfortable eloquence.
"Busy," Ghost says immediately, staring very hard into your eyes. "Thanks."
You shrug, unperturbed. "Anytime. Good night!"
He stands in the carpark for a full five minutes after you drive away. He thinks he can feel his own heartbeat throbbing through the palm he touched you with.
Well, then.
Bereft of any opportunity to get to know you—as if it would even be appropriate—Ghost stalks social media until he finds you through Soap's Instagram. Your account is private, so he sends a follow request, expectations very low that you'd allow someone with a blank sky for a profile picture and only one post on their feed to follow you, "sghostriley" notwithstanding.
But—you do. And suddenly he has a decade of material to peruse, beginning with your last year of secondary school and leading all the way up to present, the most recent photo one of you and Soap at the top of some mountain, grinning at the camera in your hiking gear.
You don't post very many pictures of yourself, he finds. Instead you document interesting food you eat or make, crafts you're working on, nice scenery you caption with variations of "saw this on my walk today :)". It's all very domestic, sweet in a way without being saccharine.
Soft, really. Totally separated from the hard edges of the world he and Soap routinely throw themselves along.
And yet, honest in a way that makes your version of the world feel more like the real one, and his and Soap’s the nightmare.
Ghost hasn't been with a girl—let alone been interested in one—in years. It isn't that the attraction had ever died, exactly. Rather, it simply became so complex, so twisted in on itself and trapped beneath years of grown-over scar tissue, that he'd made an unconscious decision never to confront it. He ignored Price’s stories about his wife’s antics at home, Gaz’s perennial heartbreak after strings of failed dates—
Soap’s lurid bragging about the women he’s taken home from various pubs.
(Were you one of those pub girls?)
So, here it is now, confronting him instead. Reminding him, in a pretty camisole, just how very much it exists.
In the carpark, there’d been a bead of sweat slipping down your neck as you’d waved him goodbye. He finds himself wondering how long it would’ve taken to slide all the way down to the slope of your breast, if he didn’t catch it with his tongue first.
He continues through your Instagram. The majority of your selfies show up, he guesses, after the beginning of your relationship with Soap.
Earlier pictures of you make your discomfort obvious. You don't like the way you look, and it shows in the tension on your face when confronted with a camera lens. But later on, you gain confidence. Your expressions are softer as you show off a new haircut or glasses.
And when the first picture of you with Soap shows up, it's like seeing someone glowing from the inside.
Your head is tucked into the juncture of his shoulder and neck. The smile on your face is soft, small and lovely in how little you're clearly thinking about it.
You're happy.
It floors him. A happy girl, settled into the embrace of a man who’s made her feel that way.
Piece of work, he is. Could ogle another man's ass without shame, but present him with that man’s girl and suddenly it upends his entire sense of self.
Some old cunt psychiatrist would have a field day analyzing him.
Ghost skips the apps and, following in Soap’s footsteps, heads back to the pubs.
It’s worse.
Not that he doesn’t have options sidling up to him, that is. It seems like all he has to do is sit at the bar and wait, and women circle their way into his orbit, not really talking to him but letting him know, simply by hovering, that they’d love for him to talk to them. Batting their lashes, laughing near him seemingly at nothing.
Up to him to make the first move then. It seems to him like the rules haven't changed over his long absence from the dating pool.
Therein lay the snag—Ghost doesn't know how to talk to women. Not that way, the way one says without saying it that he'd like to take her home and bend her over the back of his couch. Say that to a man at the right bar and that was his evening sorted, but Ghost has a feeling that won't play as well among people with cat-shaped brass knuckles on their keychains.
He's not much of a talker, period. Soap yaps enough to fill in his side of the conversation whenever they're in the field. And you...well, he doesn't know about you. Ghost has the uncomfortable feeling that he'd try for you, and fail miserably.
The bartender slides a drink in front of him, distracting him from his agonizing. When Ghost gives him a questioning look, he nods in the direction of a table behind him.
One of the barflies has made the first move.
She winks at him when he raises the glass at her. She’s pretty—her dark makeup makes her eyes look angular and mysterious, and her red dress is tight, thin, and low-cut. Her exposed chest shimmers, as if she dusted some sort of powder across her collarbones before making her way here.
Sparkly and colorful, like a lure on a line. Ready to hook something and pull it in.
(Your camisole had been threadbare and lined with cheap, fraying lace. A favorite of yours, probably, something you wore when you wanted to be comfortable, and didn’t care who thought what about it.)
Ghost notices other men are eyeing the woman, and a couple of them send nasty glares his way. That is, they do before promptly averting their gazes once they see what he looks like.
He can have this, then, if he wants it. He just has to reach out and take it.
He feels your warmth in the palm of his hand again. The breeze of your laugh brushes his cheek with a soft touch.
He sends the woman one of her own drink, drops forty quid on the bar, and leaves without looking back.
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Another dinner invite comes his way, this time courtesy of Soap himself.
“She told me she met you at the store,” Soap says, one afternoon when they’re in the changing room. “Really nice of you to help her out, LT.”
“You weren’t there to do it,” Ghost grumbles. Soap has been prancing around shirtless for fifteen minutes, faffing about while Ghost waits for him to leave so he can adjust his erection.
“I didn’t tell her to get everything!” the sergeant protests. “She just went and did it herself.” Then Soap’s eyes go all dreamy and stupid. “She’s grand, isn’t she.”
Ghost grumbles again, something noncommittal.
“Anyway, dinner’s at seven, and I’ll send you the address,” says Soap, pulling a thin t-shirt over his head. Ghosts watches him yank the hem down over his pecs, covering the toned plane of his abs.
Soap winks at him. “See you there, Ghost.”
Ghost grunts.
Soap does, in fact, see him there.
He goes out of resignation. Or maybe with some notion that seeing Soap and you together again will finally vanquish whatever sits on his chest so heavily whenever he thinks of the two of you.
Soap’s the one to answer the door. “There he is, the braw wee bastard!”
“Soap.”
From the looks of it, it’s your flat. It’s nicely decorated without being too over-designed, something warm and comfortable and welcoming. When Ghost steps inside, he’s hit immediately with the smell of seared pancetta and garlic.
The sergeant leads him through the flat. Ghost has a bottle of wine under one arm, having remembered at the last minute he should probably bring something along. You’re in the kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove.
“Hi, Ghost!” you chirp when you look over your shoulder. “Ooh, good, that’s drinks settled. Hope you like bolognese. It’s all I know how to make.”
“S’fine,” Ghost says, which he would say even if bolognese made him violently ill.
“Ach, you can make more than that,” Soap says, retrieving three long-stemmed glasses from a cabinet. “Pour a nice glass of water.”
You snatch the dish towel hanging from the oven handle and give it a snap in the general direction of Soap’s ass. He laughs and dances out of the way.
“There’s a bottle opener in the island drawer, Ghost,” you say cheerfully. You're pretty tonight, in a loose t-shirt and soft-looking joggers. Casual, like you don't have a guest over at all.
Like it's just a night in with your boyfriend.
Ghost pops the cork as Soap sets the glasses down. After he pours, the sergeant delivers a glass to his girlfriend, and there’s a brief moment of quiet as everyone sips and the sauce on the stove bubbles.
It’s all so nice and normal as to make Ghost’s hackles raise just in anticipation, although he knows there’s no reason for it. Truthfully, he almost hadn’t come. The thought of you and Soap, and Soap and you, in the same room, together, a unit, had made his stomach clench up so tight that he though he might not be able to get any food down.
But some part of him needed to come, and see this. Test out Pavlov’s theory, to see if enough negative reinforcement could break him of this borderline manic fixation. If he could associate Soap and you with romantic nausea, and nothing more, maybe he could finally stop jerking off every night to no satisfaction.
Because he had, in fact, found a porn star who looked like Soap. More tattoos, and a buzz cut rather than a mohawk, but Ghost couldn’t be picky.
The real shock had been to find that this proxy often partnered with a girl who looked enough like you to be uncanny. Too skinny, definitely, but in the one video Ghost had watched of them together, he could have sworn, as the lookalike reamed her from behind—
That it was you looking at him over your shoulder.
Looking at Soap. Or, looking at Ghost, behind him.
At that moment in the playback Ghost had come so hard, cock blazing red and raw in his hand, that the notion had liquified a little. So he couldn’t be sure what the thought had originally meant.
He hadn’t been brave enough to watch another.
“This isn’t bad,” Soap says after tasting the wine. “Nothin’ on a good whisky, mind.”
“Don’t neg your lieutenant, Johnny,” you say. “This is good, Ghost, thank you.”
Hearing Johnny fall from your lips so casually threads something uncomfortable between Ghost’s intestines. Uncomfortable, because he likes it.
Had Soap told you to call him that? Or had you decided on it all on your own? Did Soap think of Ghost whenever you said his name? Did he think of you whenever Ghost did?
“Simon’s fine,” he replies.
It escapes him before he even thinks about it. The same way he’d taken his mask off in Las Almas and looked directly at Soap, wondering in some hidden part of himself if the sergeant was impressed.
“That’s a nice name,” you say, swirling the wine in your glass. You take another sip, closing your eyes to savor it, and then, tilting your head like a little bird in thought, you pour a stream of it from the glass into your pasta sauce.
“Suits him, aye?” Soap says, side-eyeing Ghost with amusement. “Right posh name he’s got for a big scary bugger. Hidden depths, him.”
“Yeah, unlike you,” you snark, stirring.
Soap slaps a big hand over his heart. “Ach, lass, you wound me always.”
“Someone has to keep you humble,” you say, grinning. There’s a charming twinkle in your eyes.
“You gonna let ‘er get away with that, sergeant?”
He surprises himself by saying it. But something in the way you and Soap bicker—absent of the usual sugary drivel, as if the two of you have skipped over the honeymoon phase and stuck the landing right into stable commitment—invites him in.
It's magnetic, almost. It seizes the spinning needle in his brain, draws it to a standstill. Evens out the landscape, so he knows where he can go.
“You’re absolutely right, LT,” says Soap, who smacks his lips, sets his wineglass aside, and bum-rushes you.
You shriek as he captures you in both arms, lifting you off the floor and whirling you around—both the spoon in one hand and the glass in the other fling drops of red and white absolutely everywhere. And then you’re giggling as Soap wedges his face between your neck and shoulder and shakes his head like a dog, probably biting down.
Soap growls; a big smile takes over your face, eyes squeezed shut as you laugh breathlessly. The sergeant’s broad, brown forearms have yours pinned up against your chest, pressing your breasts together.
“Not fair, Ghost!” you exclaim as Soap’s growling noises turn into obnoxiously loud kisses. “No pulling rank in my house!”
“Two against one, hen, you’re outnumbered,” Soap counters. “What should we do with this one, eh, LT?”
“See if I ever cook for you two again, is what!” you protest, still grinning with delight. You kick your legs to no effect.
Soap, also grinning, slots his face back into your neck. You giggle again, complaining that it tickles.
Some incomplete circuit finally connects.
Order given. Girlfriend “punished.”
Soap making you laugh because Ghost told him to.
Not one. Not the other. Both.
“Think we can let ‘er off the hook this time,” he says, feeling dazed.
The pictures on your Instagram, with you and Soap together. The both of you, smiling together, wrapped around each other, standing at the top of a mountain and grinning what the two of you get to share.
Soap's hand spread on your back.
“Aye, sir,” Soap says, setting you down. You’re still laughing a little as you go to check the sauce, and Soap finds a towel to clean up the mess he made. Ghost reels in the meanwhile.
There’s an imprint of Soap’s teeth on your neck.
They wouldn’t be there if Ghost hadn’t sicced Soap on you.
He’s still reeling as you begin plating dinner, and Soap sets out the silverware. When everyone sits down to eat, the sergeant tops up everyone’s drinks.
“I hope you like it,” you say to Ghost, setting his plate in front of him. There's a shyness to you, a verity to your concern for his opinion.
“Oh, he will,” Soap says, grinning.
He trails the tips of his fingers along the back of your arm as he directs that jewel-blue gaze at Ghost. It's sharper than Ghost has ever noticed before—
“The LT has good taste. Don’t you, Ghost?”
And with his other hand, he raises his glass to the knowing smirk on his lips.
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a/n: I can't use arse, I know it would be more accurate but I just can't I'm sorry
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alwayslcyal · 1 year ago
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davina: so what are we dressing for halloween? josh: i don't know, i was thinking vampire.... ' i want to suck your blood ' did i do the dracula voice right? davina: *giggles*
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lonniemachin · 2 years ago
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(Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #60)
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yandere-daydreams · 4 months ago
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Screening: Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
Pairing: Yandere!Capitano x Reader (Genshin)
Word Count: 2.6k.
TW: Non/Con, AFAB!Reader, Somnophilia, Unbalanced Power Dynamics, Fingering, Size Kinks, Arranged Marriage, and Obsessive Behavior. Mild Spoilers for the Natlan Story Quest.
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Capitano only ever visits you at night.
Part of it is merely the reality of Harbinger’s schedule. If he’s in Snezhnaya at all, let alone lodging within his own estate, it’s a given that he’ll still be working tirelessly to carry out the Tsaritsa’s will, whether that means training incoming soldiers or busying himself with the paperwork deemed necessary by more bureaucratic types, like Pulcinella and Pantalone. It’s rare for him to return home (if it’s fair call that lifeless, desolate place by such a sentimental name) early enough to speak with you properly, and when he does, you only seem to hurry off to bed all the earlier. He’s not a fool. He knows you aren’t fond of him, that the company of your husband brings you little comfort. There’s no doubt in his mind that you assume yourself to be as ornamental as his manor, as his medals, as every other gift from his archon that he displays and maintains not out of gratitude, but polite obligation. He’s never corrected you. From what he can tell, the thought that he bears no great fondness for you has only ever eased your mind – eliminating such troublesome thoughts as those of a loving husband or happy marriage.
No, you don’t believe he loves you, and as far as he can tell, you’ve been given no reason to love him. Thus, he visits at night.
In plainer words, when you’re not in a state to remember he came to you at all.
You don’t share a bedroom. He has his barracks, attached to his office and furnished with only the barer essentials, and you have your nest – a small bedroom tucked into the tightest corner of the highest floor, just large enough to allow you to hoard all the softened, frivolous things you think you’re collecting behind his back. He’s careful not to brush against the woven tapestries crowding your walls as he crosses the threshold, not to disturb the careful arrangements of heaped blankets and silver trinkets you tend to leave scattered across your floor. He only pauses in front of your vanity – removing first his helmet (which, he notes with an inordinate amount of satisfaction, slots perfectly into the space left between your many combs and perfumes) then his coat, left draped haphazardly over the velvet-cushioned stool. He had the foresight to have the metal of his helmet tinted, to allow silver adornments of his uniform to tarnish beyond the point of reflectivity, but your mirror provides fewer safeguards. His vision catches on his own face and despite his better reasoning, lingers there.
The rot is no better or worse than it was when he first came to Snezhnaya, and yet in the dim light of your bedroom, it always seems a little more progressed. A jagged line of decay connects the corner of his lips to the point just above his ear, discolored flesh contained on either side by thick barriers of frostbite giving way to pure, abyssal void where there should’ve been bone. The skin around the corner of his mouth had gotten the worst of it. Grit teeth catch dull moonlight where his lips pull away and char, red viscera visible where the rot had nearly been allowed to take its toll. He’s thankful, in moments like this, that you keep your distance. Surely, it’s better to think yourself married to a monstrous man than know you were bound to monster merely masquerading as one.
Letting out a shallow breath, he forces himself away from the mirror and toward his true destination, your bedside. It’s with only the upmost care that he brushes away the sheer curtains, that he kneels onto the down-stuffed mattress – careful not to wake you with unnecessary noise or thoughtless movement. He finds you as he often does; slumped against your headboard, your sheets clumsily thrown to the side and the book you must’ve fallen asleep reading still spread open in your lap. It’s a good thing he cares for you more than he appears to. Snezhnayan nights are unforgiving, and without his daily visits, you most likely would’ve frozen to death by now.
Your book is closed and placed on the neared nightstand, your body drawn carefully onto the mattress, where you roll unconsciously onto your side. Your nightgown (your favorite, judging by how often you where despite the vastness of your collection) is long enough to reach your ankles, and yet, your fitful sleep and his disturbance has the skirt pooling at your waist. Your body is no stranger to him, and yet, impatience pricks as the back of his throat as he moves closer, as his fingertips graze over your ankle, then your thigh – so plush in comparison to his hardened, calloused form. It’s only when he reaches your hip that he thinks to remove his gloves. There aren’t many things he’s willing to risk exposure to feel, even fewer he lacks the self-restraint to resist, and yet, he never seems to be capable of that same control when it comes to you.
His hands were, thankfully, spared from the worst of the corruption’s wrath – his skin in-tact save for a small patch of exposed bone near the jut of his left wrist. You stir slightly as he traces aimless patterns into your waist, but your anxiety passes with time, and he waits until you’ve gone still to slip two fingers bellow the hem of your panties, dragging the thin material down just far enough to cup your sex properly. One day, he may grow brazen enough to take more time, to undress you completely and take in your body as a whole, rather than dividing it into such meager bits and pieces, but tonight, he contents himself with the slick heat of your cunt, the raspy breath you let out as he rocks the heel of his palm gently against your clit. It only takes a moment for you to reposition yourself, settling onto your back and parting your legs, making room for him in your bed where your heart remains closed. He knows nothing you could do in such a state would ever be considered intentional, but he spares a small smile as he leans forward, kissing the top of your head to the best of his limited ability. Despite himself, he cherishes the rare moments of faux-mutual intimacy he shares with you. Your mind, of course, would never let you take a walking corpse as a husband, but your body isn’t quite so discerning.
You’re sensitive, dampening quickly under his dutiful touch, and not for the first time, Capitano is reminded of why he grew to love you. He knew you were a delicate thing from the moment you were given to him – a former servant of the Tsaritsa, rewarded for your years at her beck and call with a hasty betrothal to a masked stranger and a sudden dismissal from your post. He’s sure one of the other Harbingers had something to do with it – the Doctor with his cat-like grin and morbid sense of humor, or perhaps Columbina with her warped idea of romance – but he had no reason to refuse, and you were never going to try, even if you’d been sobbing too violently to speak on your wedding day. No, he wouldn’t hear your voice until weeks into your marriage, after you’d begun to settle into your new role. Even then, you’d trembled through every word, your eyes never leaving the floor at your feet.
Your request had been a simple one – to have one of his soldiers help you bury the dead rabbit you’d found in the manor’s gardens that morning, while you were tending to your evergreens. When he mentioned that it would be difficult to bury much of anything this deep into winter, that surely the task would be better off left entirely to his soldiers, you only bowed your head. “I know,” you’d said, wringing the fabric of your skirt. “I… I don’t think they’d treat it with much care, though. I’d rather handle the poor thing myself.”
 His first visit to your bedroom would come a little more than a month later. He still fucks his fist to his memory of your expression, from time to time.
Two of his fingers slip into you with ease. Your lips part at the sudden intrusion, a high-pitched mewling sound escaping from somewhere deep in your chest as he curls his digits against your clenching walls. Upon further thought, it must’ve been the Doctor responsible for your engagement – no other Harbinger would have a sense of humor cruel enough to see such a delicate creature paired with such a beast, to know how your thighs would twitch and shake as you struggled to take his fingers and still think it to be a fitting match. He really does try to be gentle with you, but he’s still human, still at the mercy of his vices, and the way your breath hitches as he thrusts a third digit into you is worth more to him than any amount of gold or gems or angels’ song.
His free hand is braced beside your head, his wrist angled to better allow him to fuck knuckle-deep into you, but his eyes remain fixed on your face as your features scrunch and relax in turns, as your lips purse only to fall open for every little, pleasured noise that bubbles up inside of you. The loose collar of your nightgown falls off of your shoulder, and his mouth finds your exposed collarbone, tongue lapping greedily (but harmlessly, he reminds himself, harmlessly) over your chest. It’s strange, how drawn he is to you, but not unexpected. Rot always spreads the fastest when fed with fresh meat.
You arch your back, crying out as his fingers curl inside of you, and his head dips lower – latching onto your nipple and sucking gently, gently, his teeth barely grazing your skin. Your hands knead satin sheets mindlessly, and against his will, his mind drifts to how you’d look if you were ever forced to take something more substantial than his fingers, if you’d paw at his chest the same way as he eased you onto his cock. The thought alone has his digits pumping into you with a reckless sort of haste, his palm grinding sloppily against your clit until you stiffen underneath him, until your pretty cunt spasms and drips around his fingers.
Ultimately, it’s not your climax that wakes you, but his own weakness. You buck against his hand and, with a deep groan, he slips – teeth burrowing into the supple curve of your breast with just a touch more force than he’d ever used, before. His eyes dart back to your face just as yours blearily flutter open, still weighed down by sleep and clouded by exhaustion. In the place of panic, displeasure, you portray only confusion – the corner of your lips quirking downward as you struggle to make sense of the sight in front of you. It’s only as he draws back, carefully removing his hand from the space between your thighs and resuming a more dignified position, that you seem to remember how to speak. “…my lord?”
“It’s only a dream, my love.” He cups your cheek, tilting your head back and pressing another feather-light kiss into your forehead, then your cheek. “Close your eyes and rest.”
Your gaze remains fixed on him for a second longer, but with time and coaxing, you retreat back into yourself, letting your eyes close and your head lull into his hand. With an airy laugh, he lays you down, righting your nightgown and covering you with the sheets and quilts you neglected, when trusted with the task on your own.
It only takes him minutes to don his helmet and slip out of your bedroom and yet, by the time he crosses the threshold, he’s already longing for tomorrow’s visit to come all the sooner.
~
You can count the number of times you’ve sought Capitano out on a single hand. You try to limit how often you speak to him, how many reasons he has to re-think the convince of his marriage to you, but doing dangerous things is sometimes necessary. You hope that, one day, you’ll grow a bit braver and those dangerous things won’t be so hard to do, but that’s not a reality you currently live in and, thus, not a reality worth entertaining, at the moment.
(You also hope that, one day, you won’t consider it dangerous to speak to your own husband, but as you’ve already explained, fantasy is something you rarely had time for. Best not to focus on something so romantically outlandish and devote your attention to crueler truths.)
You find him in his war room of an office, where he almost always resides when he’s home. You can hear him muttering to members of his legion as you approach, but by the time you reach the doorway, they’ve been sent elsewhere – out of earshot. You’d planned to hold your composure, to meet the void where Capitano’s eyes should’ve been, but it’s one thing to plan to be daring and another to try and force yourself into the pit of endless blackness existed beneath his helmet. Ultimately, you settle for keeping your eyes narrowed at your own feet and your shoulders squared as you break the quiet.
“Good morning, my lord. I’m so sorry to bother you, but…” Suddenly, your throat feels dry, your legs unsteady. You risk a quick glance toward him, but regret it in an instant. You wish he wouldn’t wear that helmet, not at home, not around you. You’d heard that his face was no great work of art, that he’d been left scarred by some ancient battle, but it couldn’t have possibly been worse than the blankness he expects you to satiate yourself with, in place of anything more substantial. Many people had scars, but very few thought to hide them underneath such punishing masks.
You clear your throat, forcing yourself to go on. “Were you in my bedroom last night?”
His back straightens, and for a moment, you’re able to convince yourself that, if you’d been able to see his expression, he would’ve looked taken aback. “Of course not,” he says, and you take pains to convince yourself that the note of condensation you hear is simply a product of your imagination. “Why do you ask? Did something disturb you?”
You try (and fail) not to recall the distorted fragments that’d been haunting you all morning – all broken, all confused, too ungrounded to be called a memory yet too vivid to be written off entirely as a dream. A sharp pressure in the pit of your stomach, a damp heat dripping down your chest, a man with a scarred face and your husband’s voice laid over you; none of it makes sense, but you can see it in your mind clear as day, feel its realness in the soreness of your chest and the ache between your thighs. Capitano has never shown an interest in, uh, consummating your marriage, and even if he did, you would never think him capable of something like… like that. He’s a Harbinger, a leader, an honorable man – albeit, a very cold one, too. Even if he’s never been particularly kind to you, he isn’t a monster, and you would be ashamed to think of him as one.
“No, no, it was my mistake. I—I think it was just a bad dream.” You force yourself to laugh, falling into a shallow courtesy. Of course. Of course. It’d only been a dream. It was foolish of you to come to him at all. “I’m sorry to waste your time on such a petty matter, my lord.”
His solace comes in the form of a curt nod, a silent dismissal. You take that as a sign to make your escape, retreating before you can say anything else to make yourself seem paranoid and foolish.
Hopefully, tonight will prove to be more restful.
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